Thursday, 30 October 2014

Hope you and the gang are well! Just wanted to email you to ask a few things and share some news!

I recently came in the top 10 of the International Winston Churchill Design Competition and headed to Pentland in London for an interview. I also was asked to meet the judges from Artsthread and the Churchill Museum to talk about my piece. I'll include an image so you can see the piece!

Wednesday, 22 October 2014

I thought I'd send through the text from an interview I did back in August/September for a horror magazine in which I was feature as artist of the month as well as their cover artist for the issue. There's a couple of things that people just starting out may find interesting in there so I've copied and pasted it into this email to save you having to buy the issue. I've put the questions in bold so that you can find which questions and answers interest you. There are some about my artistic education, how I tackle a piece from beginning to end and also how I got started.

UtB: Let's start with an easy one: Illustration. Why?

Initially, once I realized I wanted to do something creative, I started subconsciously weighing up my options as to what it was I could possibly see myself doing for the rest of my life. I was able to do a fair few things when it came to being visually creative, like photography, animation etc. but it would always boil down to drawing, painting and just being able to arrange things on a page. I then took stock of my life previously and noticed that, although it hadn’t seemed odd to me in the slightest, I had always been drawing and painting in whatever medium I had to hand and it was something I clearly enjoyed. Plus – I loved anything with a narrative. If you were to pick up a handful of my CDs, my films, my books and video games – you’d see that the common thread is always a strong narrative. So with that in mind I decided that illustration was the best way forward as it allowed me to do what I loved, explore new narratives and stories that perhaps the world hadn’t even seen yet and hopefully get paid for it in return. There’s a saying that goes: ‘If you can do something you love for a profession then you’ll never have to work a day in your life’ and I started quoting it as a front line of defense whenever people questioned why on earth I was doing what I was doing.
However, once I got out of University and started interacting with clients and their source material I came to appreciate the level of honesty and trust between client and illustrator. As an illustrator you become a translator of sorts for the author’s work and that in turn is a huge responsibility and ultimately an honor, but I think that in my line of ‘darker’ illustration I have had the opportunity to translate some of the most honest pieces of work I will ever read. Darker fiction, or ‘horror’ if we fancy being very general, is often the stage through which people explore and play out some very deep things about themselves. I’ve had clients that use their writing to explore their sexuality, their fears, their beliefs, their passions – even some shocking home truths but ultimately it’s honesty and that’s something that I respect above all else. In everyday life, and especially as an illustrator or writer, it is far easier to lie than to tell the naked truth.

UtB: Often, we ask our horror artists why they can't draw something pleasant. But you do create art for children as well as truly disturbing horrific art. Why so versatile?

When I came out of University I started applying for anything and everything that had the word ‘illustration’ in the title. After weeks of sending just over 1,000 emails I got a reply from a brand new publisher who wanted to commission me to write and illustrate a children’s book with the hopes of developing it into a series. I was completely baffled as I had no idea what they’d seen in my style of work that had led them to think I was capable of such things but I had a stack of work that didn’t get added to the portfolio (ironically because it wasn’t dark enough) that proved that I might be up to the task. A year later the books came out (‘The Girl Who Could Make Things Float’ was the debut) and I had a great working relationship with the publisher but I was also suddenly aware of how balanced I felt. Something that should seem obvious but isn’t as an illustrator is that if you do dark work all day long – you get a little dark in yourself by association, so having that new outlet to explore a happier side was incredibly relieving and eventually I remembered I used to enjoy that sort of work long before all my darker stuff started creeping as a student. Anyway – a year into being an illustrator I was still relatively unknown for my children’s book work but I was also aware of how niche I was as a darker artist. I knew I wanted to be doing this for the rest of my life so it seemed that the best way to do so would be to have a more inclusive style of illustration running in tandem to my existing ‘Carrion House’ style that could bring in the extra funds I needed to comfortably keep myself in what I love. I needed a style that would be commercial but at the same time uniquely my own and that’s how my ‘other’ illustration alias: ‘Hoodwink House’ was born. However, upon making this decision and launching it to the world, Carrion House started gaining more and more popularity, almost like some sort of sibling rivalry, and suddenly Hoodwink House seemed to become the supporting style but that hasn’t deterred me from pursuing both in equal measure. I have numerous projects for both styles in the pipeline and am almost at a stage where I’d consider both styles to be 50/50 split in contributing to who I am as an illustrator.

UtB: How important is it to you to keep the macabre and fairy tales separate? I mean, have you ever read those Brothers Grimm?

I find it very difficult to stop the darker work bleeding into the child-friendly work quite often, although it’s not usually until I am about half way into one of the happier projects that this starts to happen. This could be chalked up to the fact that I don’t really separate my work whilst it’s ‘in utero’ – my desk is covered in drawings of corpses and happy woodland creatures in equal measure, but you rightly mentioned the Brothers Grimm, and they are proof of how fine line the line between whimsy and melancholy truly is. For instance I recently had the chance to collaborate on a children’s book called ‘Emlyn and the Gremlin,’ with an incredible author by the name of Steff F. Kneff, that has a plot built around the idea of a small, humanoid creature sneaking into a young girl’s bedroom at night to play with her possessions, whilst she sleeps, before leaving again come morning. Now, obviously the story is incredibly bright, very happy and is created with the aims of teaching children not to judge on first impressions, the importance of understanding other people’s reasons and backgrounds etc. but with themes like breaking and entering, small children being visited by strange life forms – and a rhyming pattern throughout reminiscent of Dr. Seuss, you can see how easily (and how tempting) it could have been to just cross the line into darker territory for a spell and see what would happen. But on reflection, I think all of the best children’s stories have an element of horror within them, whether it’s obvious or sub text, it’s that element that stays with you long after you close a page and adds a lasting effect to any moral lesson that the book may have been trying to impart. I heard someone once say that a great comedian is the perfect choice when casting a drama because they know how peoples’ minds work and I think it’s the same for darker writers and artists – they can explore and appreciate innocence on a level uncharted by most because they know what real horror is capable of.

UtB: Artists vary widely in their education and training. Please tell us about yours.

In the U.K we tend to go: Nursery school, infants school, primary school, secondary school, A-Level or sixth form for two years, then University. It’s whilst I was at A-Level that I realized I was going to be doing something creative. The teacher that I had for those two years was one of the biggest influences on my work ethic and overall respect for the artistic world, in all it’s forms. He would tell you outright if he thought your work was terrible and had no problems berating you in front of the whole class – he even ripped out one of my sketchbook’s pages and forced me to paint over another with white wash but he did it in such a way that you went away wanting to prove him wrong, not out of petty teenage angst, but out of pure respect and admiration. He was an artist in his own right, still is, and his studio would be covered in students’ work, past and present, as well as his own work right along side it. He’d set us up for a lesson, tell us what we had to get on with, show us how and then go over to one of his massive canvasses and paint his own personal piece right alongside us for the rest of the lesson. I think it was that effortless transition from professional creative to self-directed creative that showed me first hand how easily your passions could be transferred to real ‘working’ life. It gave me hope and something to aim for. Then, I went to do a ‘Foundation degree’ before University which, unless you are an art student, is fairly uncommon and lasts roughly a year. I did mine in London, Wimbledon, and you spent the first couple of weeks sampling everything the establishment had to offer. Then you whittled it down your three favourite fields for another month or so before finally selecting what you thought you were most suited to. I ended up in a scary umbrella option called ‘visual communication,’ which basically meant commercial imagery in the most general sense. I was trapped in a room shoulder to shoulder with photographers, graphic designers, typographers, traditional illustrators, children’s book illustrators and even a couple of ‘fine artists’ who had severely lost their way but continued to scratch their chins and occasionally ask from across the room in their most Shakespearian monologue style voice: ‘what does it all mean?!’ I made it out the other side of that year with a huge sense of confusion and a strange mix of influences caused me to temporarily lose sight of what I truly wanted to be. But when I got to Portsmouth for my University degree everything was confirmed. I was reminded of what I truly enjoyed and what I wanted to do more of in the future, I found it all by ironically being forced to look more inwardly than outwardly at the other students I was grouped with. The tutors were practicing illustrators so you knew there was truth in every shred of advice they saw fit to pass your way and it felt like a continuation of my formative A-Level experience. I was receiving the tools to do what I wanted to do but only the choice to practice and perfect them, to bend them to my will was completely up to me. The unofficial mantra of the illustration degree at Portsmouth is “what you put in – you will get out,” and I know that sounds like common sense but you’d be amazed at how many people decide to sit back, put in minimum effort and sit lethargically in the belief that the work will just find them. It doesn’t work like that and once you’re out of the starting gate you know that. You have to do the leg work, you have to put yourself out there and you have to believe in the work you’re creating but if you truly enjoy what you’re doing then it won't even feel like effort. It’ll feel necessary. I heard from one of my friends at a London based art degree that her department’s mantra during her University years was “nobody wants you,” which although incredibly depressing is an unfortunate truth. The difference with my time at Portsmouth and my combined education to that point is that I came out of there wanting to make people want me and that’s probably more important than the degree itself.

Tuesday, 21 October 2014

So, here is an update on all the crazy things that are going on in my world at the moment. All I can describe it as is a 'jack of all trades’ journey through creative life.

With illustration, I rebranded myself as Sprankenstein. Mainly because I was finding that the projects I was getting commissioned for just under “Jade Alexandra Spranklen” were corporate, boring and meaningless for the sake of some money. I wanted to do something more me, and focus on my own project ideas more. So Sprankenstein was born!

Under this guise I have been doing Press Packets for Independent films, Album Artwork for musicians in LA (I spent some time there in January and made lots of connections - Including Jay Z haha). I am also working on publishing my first short book called “The Little Book of Nobodies” which should be out for Christmas. (Fingers Crossed)

Most recently as you saw, I was exhibiting with the Art Apart Fair - London Edition at the Bethnal Green Town Hall Hotel with the Singapore Art Garrett Gallery (who I exhibited with in Singapore back in 2013). There were some amazing artists there. Basically Art Apart curated the whole first floor of the hotel, and each gallery involved had a room to display several of their artists. In my room there was also two incredible photographers - Barry Cawston and James Sparshatt.
I think I sold three pieces, including the Jimi Hendrix #2 that I did especially for the event.

Aside from illustration, I am also working with Soho House Group again helping them launch bits and bobs in the East London-sphere, so thats an interiors thing.

Oh and one more thing, recently got a new studio in the grounds of the William Morris Gallery with Waltham Forest Council. Such a great space. There should be a press release about it soon. THATS IT. Huge email, sorry.

These are some images from a series of workshops in the Level 4 unit Identity Through Print. Exploring the portrait through a variety of materials, students think about how the myriad of media choices we make can shape our reading of an image. Also, that different media represent different kinds of thinking and making which can inform illustrative practice. Enjoy.

Monday, 20 October 2014

Thank you for your entry to the Shaping Portsmouth banner competition. I am delighted to inform you that the judges (myself, Maureen O'Neill and Bob Wright) have selected your entry as the winner. We particularly liked the way your piece responded to the brief creatively and the conceptual qualities of your work stood out. I will now be working with Corporate Communications to arrange for your image to be included in our banner for the University of Portsmouth CCI Faculty stand at the Shaping Portsmouth conference on 17th November at the Pyramids Centre in Southsea. Please feel free to drop by the conference to see you work in situ, the opening times are 8.30am - 1pm. Otherwise I will organise to have a photograph taken. We will have the banner delivered to our Faculty office by Friday 14th November.

I'm pleased to tell you that the Faculty have decided to award you a £50 Amazon gift voucher which I will organise over the next few days - congratulations! If you would like to drop by the Faculty Office Eldon Room 0.98a, middle of next week, you can collect it and it would be a pleasure to meet you too.

Many thanks again for taking part and we looking forward to seeing the banner made up.

Thursday, 16 October 2014

Fab to see these large scale Intuos Pro Tablets and Cintiq pens in the IT suite, great for illustrators to be able to draw directly on screen at any angle. Smaller tablets and pens can be booked out as well.

Sunday, 12 October 2014

Hello! Just thought I'd send a quick message to let everyone know what I've been doing since graduation.
I got a job at Willenhall Community Primary School in Coventry as a TA supporting in the art room. A few weeks into the half term the art teacher left and I was given the chance to step up, so I am now teaching art across the whole school from Reception to Year 6 with unqualified teacher status! The children have been developing their scissor skills and making collages, experimenting with mixing colours and creating 3D work with clay and mod roc.

I'm having so much fun thinking of new ideas that the children could learn from and I'm learning so much myself along the way. Having art as a specialist subject in this school works so well for the children and lets me focus all of my time on art and the skills the children need to learn.

Tuesday, 7 October 2014

Hi Maureen and Jackie, just thought i'd drop you an email just to say that my PGCE year is going great! We've been at the bognor campus learning theory and a local school within gosport making products that relate to our specialism within teaching. These opportunities have been fantastic as a lot of trainee teachers don't get this experience or guidance. I've started my school placement as of last week and I am there until christmas! Everyone is very friendly and organised and really helpful with learning to teach secondary school children.

To any future students who don't know what to do for the future who love children and their subject specialism I highly recommend this course!
I have attached some pictures of what we've been making with my specialism of food and textiles!

Monday, 6 October 2014

Great news, Adobe Certification is now offered for all students. CCI Skills are running drop in sessions and one-to-one appointments to help students work towards this additional qualification.Students can take proficiency exams in Dreamweaver, Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign etc.

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Hello!

Welcome to the Illustration course BA (HONS) and new MA course at the University of Portsmouth, UK. This is our news blog showing events, exhibitions, publications, degree shows and current projects... and of course, what all our lovely alumni are up to now.And thanks to Carl Reed for our title illustration and Jade Spranklen for our background pattern.